


We Have Not Touched the Stars

by lightning and a lightning bug (spoons)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Build, but then sexy times, post winter soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:35:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1748081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoons/pseuds/lightning%20and%20a%20lightning%20bug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky comes back into Steve’s life the same way he left it, suddenly and with complete devastation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We Have Not Touched the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Set some time after the events of The Winter Soldier.

Bucky comes back into Steve’s life the same way he left it, suddenly and with complete devastation.

It’s a Tuesday. Tuesdays are when Steve volunteers at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. He’ll make the rounds wherever there are patients who want to see Captain America, but he prefers the children’s ward, something that makes him feel infinitely guilty. 

These kids are sick, sick enough to be hospitalized, and Steve should feel only pity and compassion for them. But part of him finds being around them a relaxing experience, because it’s an experience entirely free of expectations. These kids don’t expect him to be anything, his mere presence is more than enough to satisfy them. They ask questions about his shield and if he’s really friends with Iron Man and their eyes are bright and honest. Even in their terrible circumstances, these children seem untouched by cynicism or corruption. Sometimes Steve thinks the entire world might be rotting from the inside out, but then he sees those kids and remembers the darkness isn’t everywhere. As long as something as pure and innocent as a child’s laugh exists in the world, the bad guys haven’t won.

On this particular Tuesday, he gets home late. Traffic was moving slowly and Steve felt no particular desire to fight it. He had moved from his old place a few weeks ago, preferring to live somewhere Nick Fury hadn’t been assassinated and where, if there were undercover agents living as his neighbors, they were supremely uninterested in him.

His new apartment was in the corner of the ninth floor. Steve always took the stairs. There was a small kitchen that opened to the living room, and short hallway that contained the doors to the bathroom and the two bedrooms. The apartment had come with a couch, a television, a coffee table, three bar stools for the kitchen island, a king sized bed, and a clean white shower curtain. Steve had added absolutely nothing else.

_You planning on shipping out tomorrow or something?_ Sam said the first time he came over. _This is your home. Put up a picture of a landscape, some needlepoint, man, something._

_It’s bleak,_ Nat said on her first visit. She had been responsible for the pretty blonde interior designer that had attacked his previous place. _It’s really fucking bleak, Steve._

Despite their words, however, Steve could tell they both understood his aversion to personal touches. _Home_ was barely even a concept for people like them.

When Steve walks in the door of his apartment tonight, he encounters its first new addition, sitting on the couch with rigid posture and shadowed, haunted eyes.  
“Bucky,” Steve says, and he’s surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. He hasn’t turned the lights on, and he doesn’t make a move to do so now. It’s likely foolish, but he can’t help himself from seeing Bucky as some fragile, exotic insect, like a butterfly with velvet black wings, one that comes out at night and lands only when the rest of the world is still.

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice isn’t steady, it’s hoarse and gravel-rough. He’s wearing a baggy jacket and pants that look suspiciously close to fatigues, stuffed into a worn pair of boots. His too-long hair hangs limp and greasy around his face. “It’s hotter than hell in here.”

It’s such a Bucky thing to say Steve almost laughs, but hearing such familiar words from the body of someone who is still very much a stranger hits at something deep inside him, and the laugh is caught in his throat.

He shrugs instead, and says, “I don’t like the cold.”

“You never did. You were so small, I remember…” Bucky pauses, and the look on his face is close to pain. “You’d think with all that muscle now you’d be better insulated.”

Steve does laugh this time, even if it’s strained and confused. He’s still standing just inside his door, clutching his keys, and Bucky, his best friend who he thought he watched die, who was tortured and manipulated into becoming something close to a machine, is sitting on his couch.

“I guess being frozen for several decades didn’t do much to increase my fondness for cold weather.” 

It’s a line and Steve knows he’s crossing it. He has no idea what Bucky is going to do in response. He tries to keep his stance relaxed, convey with his body language that everything is safe and normal, but inside, though he doesn’t want to admit it, he’s tensing for a fight.

Bucky doesn’t move, except to ever so slightly clench the black-gloved fingers of his left hand. The gaze he turns on Steve isn’t violent, or even angry. It’s cripplingly lost, and utterly, utterly broken.

“You don’t get used to it?” he asks in a near-whisper.

Steve moves without thinking. He drops his keys on the floor and sits on the couch next to Bucky, keeping his distance, but not as much as he could. He reaches out and puts a hand on Bucky’s knee. Bucky flinches, but doesn’t pull away, and suddenly this isn’t Captain America and the Winter Soldier, facing off for a possible battle, this is just Steve and Bucky, looking out for each other because they are all the other has.

“You don’t get used to it,” Steve tells Bucky. “But you find ways to cope.”

Bucky is silent for a while. Steve keeps his hand on his knee. At last, Bucky moves, jerking a little like a marionette doll, and puts a hand to his temple.

“I remember,” he says. “A little bit. It’s fuzzy, but I can see some of it. It happened before. I remembered before. And they took it away. Every time I remembered they took it away again.”

“No one is going to take anything from you, Bucky,” Steve promises, fierce and desperate. He’s made a lot of promises over the years and he’s broken just as many, but he’ll carve this one into the sky if he has to, because this is one he intends to keep. “No one is going to take anything from you ever again.”

The last thing Steve is expecting is Bucky to pitch sideways, but he catches him anyway. It still feels strange to be bigger than Bucky, to be the one wrapping his arms tightly around his friend instead of the other way around, but Steve does so without a second thought. His shield is his specialty but this is a far stronger protection, because this is his body and his soul he’s laying down. This is everything, wrapped around the dark-haired man who is shuddering against him like a wire, torn free from its connector and sparking in the wind.

***

Steve wakes up first, a commercial on the television blaring with a sudden volume that pulls him out of a dream of icy water and hot, clutching hands. He’s bleary and disoriented, not used to sleeping on his couch, and by the time his brain kicks in and tells him to find the remote the commercial is over, and the early morning talk show with its gray-suited hosts and their plastic smiles has returned. Their empty chatter and deliberate sips from incongruously bright coffee mugs are little more than a background hum, and Steve tilts his head back, not ready yet to open his eyes.

He’d turned on the television and flicked through several channels last night just to put some life into the room. After nearly throwing himself into Steve Bucky hadn’t seemed inclined to move, but rather stayed slumped into Steve’s side in some state between waking and sleeping, his eyes open but blank, his chest rising and falling with an unnaturally few number of breaths. While having Bucky close to him after everything that had happen between them was more than Steve could have hoped for, Bucky’s catatonia was more than a little disturbing. 

Steve himself was prone to sitting in the dark in the evenings, because once he sank onto the couch, elbows on knees and head in hands, he would stray deep into his thoughts, and it hardly seemed worth it then to get up to turn on a light. What would that illuminate? A lonely apartment and a lonely man, and a hoard of ghosts whom he never asked to leave.

Last night was different though, different in a thousand ways. It seemed wrong to sit in dark and the silence when someone else was with him, as dark and silent as that person themselves might be. Steve had found a baseball game on television and turned the volume down low, the familiar motions and patterns of the game as soothing as the pale blue light that flickered over them both. 

Somewhere between the seventh and eighth inning Bucky’s eyes had gone from being open to being closed, and though nothing else in his posture or demeanor changed Steve took that to mean Bucky had gone to sleep. He watched him for a while before nodding off himself, still as fascinated as he had ever been by the dark smudge of Bucky’s lashes against his cheeks, the strong cut of his jaw.

Steve takes a deep breath now and opens his eyes, squinting in the brightness of the sun streaming through the windows. He has blinds, but they were cheap and fragile, and Steve never bothers to close them. Another breath and he looks at Bucky. The sight hits him like a punch to the chest.

Asleep on Steve’s arm, Bucky looks exactly like he did decades ago. Except for the long hair and the metal arm carefully hidden with a coat sleeve and a black glove, for this brief moment all traces of the Winter Soldier are gone. Bucky looks just like the bold and cocksure boy with the secret soft side Steve has known almost his whole life.

Steve’s stomach lurches suddenly, like someone put a fishhook inside him and gave it a pull. He remembers another time he watched Bucky sleep. They were in Bavaria, in the mountains, and it was cold. The Howling Commandos couldn’t risk a fire, too close to a Hydra camp, so they wrapped themselves in all the gear they had and hunkered down for the night.

They weren’t exactly spread out but they weren’t lying on top of one another either, that is until Dernier relieved Bucky from his turn at watch and Bucky came and lay down right next to Steve.

“What are you doing?” Steve mumbled sleepily, confused by the sudden flail of limbs and unexpected jab of an elbow in his side. Bucky went instantly still and silent, like he was at the top of a ridge looking through his scope and his hands were on his rifle. But his hands weren’t on his rifle, they were on Steve, pressed flat against his chest.

“Are you cold?” Bucky whispered. Though he wasn’t moving now he had already pushed himself close enough that Steve could feel the breath from the words on his throat. “You always used to be cold, I just figured…”

“Got a lot more body heat now,” Steve answered, something about the situation making him whisper as well. “Goes along with the muscles.”

“Oh fuck you,” Bucky sighed, and shiver went through Steve he didn’t think had anything to do with the cold.

“I could share.” He could _smell_ Bucky he was so close, and it wasn’t like catching whiff of perfume from a dame as she walked by, or that time he’d sat in the backseat of the car with Peggy and could ever so faintly detect her delicate floral scent in the air. No, this was heady and overpowering, soaking not just into Steve’s nose but his _skin_ , gun oil and cigarette smoke and crisp, winter snow.

“You bet your ass you’ll share,” Bucky replied, and pushed impossibly closer. Steve draped his arm over Bucky’s torso, hand resting uncertainly on his back. He could feel so much of Bucky, a hard-soft line all the way down his front, and even more alarming than how unfamiliar he felt being bigger than Bucky was just how very familiar it felt to have Bucky lying in his arms. It felt comfortable, natural, sharing space and air with Bucky like that, and though a small warning bell at the back of his brain was shrilling _wrong! wrong!_ the rest of Steve couldn’t deny how it felt very much right…

Of course, that was then, this is now. If Steve were going to write an autobiography, he thinks that would probably be the title. Worlds have changed since that night on the mountain, and no matter how he looks the Bucky asleep on his couch is not the same Bucky who slept curled into his chest on a hard-packed ground. And Steve, for that matter, is not the same Steve, either.

A lock of dark hair slips over Bucky’s face as he exhales, and without thinking Steve raises a hand to brush it back. Before his fingers get within an inch of Bucky’s face, he finds himself thrown back against the arm of the couch, legs pinned by a solid body and metal hand clamped around his throat.

“Bucky,” he wheezes, scrabbling at the hand. “Bucky, it’s me. It’s just me.” He tries to make his face and eyes look gentle and familiar but it’s not the easiest thing to do when his windpipe is slowly being crushed. He doesn’t kick or hit at Bucky, because he doesn’t want to fight him. He doesn’t want to fight Bucky ever again.

It’s only seconds, though it feels like much longer, and Steve’s vision is starting to gray around the edges. He can’t help a small groan of pain, and that’s when the pressure on both his throat and his legs vanishes.

Steve gives himself time to take several deep breaths before he sits up, moving slowly and keeping his limps loose, trying to show every sign he’s not going on the defensive, he’s not going to attack.

It doesn’t do any good. Bucky is huddled against the opposite arm of the couch, knees drawn up and arm flung across his face. He looks like a dog who has been beaten so many times by its owner it comes to expect it from everyone else, frightened but unresisting and ashamed.

“Do,” Steve tries, but his voice comes out as a croak. Bucky flinches, and Steve flinches reflexively in response. He clears his throat, trying to do so unobtrusively as if he wasn’t just partially strangled by his best friend. “Do you want to take a shower?”

Bucky lowers his arm an inch and looks over it, like an animal peeking over a hedge, watching for predators. “What?” he says.

“A shower,” Steve repeats. “You look like you could use one.”

Bucky just stares at him. Slowly, like he’s in a film being run through the projector at half-speed, Steve reaches out and bumps his knuckles against Bucky’s shoulder.

“I’m saying you stink, Barnes.”

There’s a pause, and for a moment Steve thinks it hasn’t worked. Then Bucky drops his arm entirely and though he doesn’t quite smile, his eyes lose most of their frightened, guilty look.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Yeah, a shower sounds good.”

“Okay.” Steve gets up and heads towards the bathroom. Putting his back to the Winter Soldier makes his skin prickle, but that’s kind of the point. Bucky makes no sound as he follows, but Steve can sense him a few steps behind regardless.

He grabs a towel from the linen closet and sets it on the sink, before ducking into his bedroom to get out a clean white t-shirt and a pair of loose, soft pants. He returns with them to the bathroom where Bucky is waiting, and then there they both are, standing in the small space.

“Use whatever you need,” Steve says with a somewhat wild gesture that encompasses everything from his bottle of shampoo to the light fixture on the ceiling. “It’s pretty basic, but…”

Bucky gives him something between a nod and shrug and Steve feels like an idiot. Bucky’s been an orphan during the Depression, a soldier during a war, and a trained assassin on Hydra’s leash, it’s not like he’s going to care that Steve’s shower doesn’t have expensive body wash or a loofa.

“There’s a trick to the shower,” Steve says, because though silence has been his constant companion for a while now, there’s something about sharing the room with both it and Bucky that makes him feel suffocated and overcrowded. He leans over the tub to tug on the hot water tap, pulling it up and out to get the water flowing. When he turns back around, Bucky has taken off his shirt.

It’s the most he’s seen of Bucky since they were in the army together and stood side by side under the showers in the barracks, dirt and sweat washing away in rivulets down their skin. That was almost seventy years ago, Steve realizes, and a hysterical laugh threatens to bubble up in his throat. Seventy years, and both of them hardly aged, but both of them irreparably changed.

Steve knows he should leave, he should look away and walk out of the bathroom, but he can’t stop staring. Once the topography of Bucky’s body was almost as familiar to Steve as the streets of his hometown, but looking at Bucky now is like coming back to his hometown after years away and finding it has been hit by an atomic bomb.

Among the dozens of new muscles on Bucky’s chest are a dozens more scars. Bright lines of white and patches of knotted brown stand out against his translucently pale skin. If the experiments performed on Bucky were in any way similar to what was done to Steve— and Steve always suspected they were— then Bucky should have similar accelerated healing, meaning it took far worse injuries than a normal human would have to sustain to leave marks like those. With a soldier’s eye Steve is already trying to catalogue the worst of them. That looks like a burn on the lower right hip, a spray of bullets over the ribs, a stab wound beneath his shoulder. And of course, on the left, the inescapable evidence of everything that had been taken from him.

Bucky’s skin meets metal in a twisted mess of flesh, scar tissue shimmering sickly white like exposed cartilage, surrounded by angry patches of red and streaks of blueish green, almost like fresh bruises on an old wound. It was as if when they gave Bucky his new arm they pulled out some of his insides, and rather than put them back in they’d simply stuck them to his outside. The arm itself makes a violently dramatic contrast with its clean, smooth pieces, interlocking neatly and finished with that red star, pressed into the metal like a brand.

Bucky shifts his weight and sort of hugs himself with his nonmetal arm, and Steve remembers he’s staring at him.

_For Pete’s sake_ , Steve thinks. _Here I am trying to make him feel comfortable, and I’m goggling at him like he’s a sideshow act in some carnival._

“I’m sorry,” Steve mumbles. “I didn’t mean— I’ll just let you…”

He has to move past Bucky to leave the bathroom. The space is so small it puts them practically chest to chest. Steve has a wild urge to take off his own shirt in what he assumes would be some bizarre attempt at camaraderie. He knows what it’s like to look in a mirror and not recognize what you see, and he’s got a few scars of his own.

But he’s acted like enough of a dunce in the last few minutes so Steve just slides out of the bathroom, all clothes on, and quietly shuts the door behind himself.

He wanders around his apartment for a little while, the familiar if bare surroundings now feeling strangely alien, before he thinks of a way to be useful. Steve has never been much of a cook, but it’s not too hard to make pancakes, especially once you’ve admitted in front of Sam Wilson you use the just-add-water mix that comes in a plastic jug and he practically cries before insisting on teaching you how to make them from scratch.

There’s always fresh fruit in Steve’s kitchen too, because its low price and incredible availability is still a novelty to him. He slices up some strawberries and is hunting for the confectioner’s sugar to make whipped cream— no matter what Natasha says about modern technology, whipped cream in a can is _not_ as good as the handmade stuff— when Bucky enters the kitchen.

He does so completely silently, but Steve senses him anyway. They had always been able to sense each other during the war, moving like dancers in a waltz even when dozens of enemies were between them, or Bucky was out of eyesight, stashed away with his rifle while Steve was on the forefront. Steve doesn’t know if it’s comforting or heartbreaking that the same seems to be true even now.

Bucky looks a thousand times better than he had before the shower, his hair clean and damp and pushed back from his face, some of the tightness around his mouth eased. He’s put his jacket back on, but he’s wearing Steve’s clothes underneath and the sight of that does something funny to Steve’s stomach. Bucky looks similarly thunderstruck, but he’s staring at the food, not at Steve.

“You made pancakes,” Bucky states, like he’s giving the answer to a complicated scientific theorem in front of a panel of Nobel prize winners.

“I did.”

“You made pancakes, not eggs.” Bucky looks up at Steve. “Because… I hate eggs.”

Steve can tell it’s a revelation of sorts. He nods, and is surprised at smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. “So you told me, once or twice.”

“I hate eggs,” Bucky repeats, hardly paying attention to Steve. “They used to serve them all the time when I was a kid… Some building with grey stone walls. I didn’t like it much, I didn’t like the eggs.”

“The orphanage,” Steve supplies quietly. Bucky nods, his gaze locked inward.

“Sometimes, another boy would play with me. I liked that. I liked him. He was so small. The first time I met him he’d been beaten half to hell by someone twice his size.” Bucky looks up again. “ _You_. You were beaten half to hell.”

Steve tries for the smile this time, but it doesn’t quite come. “An unfortunately common experience back then.” 

Bucky steps forward, and slowly raises his right arm. For a moment it seems like he’s going to touch Steve’s cheek with his outstretched fingers, but then he blinks and steps back.  
 “Thanks for the pancakes,” he says, looking away. “I’m glad you… remember.”

“Same to you,” Steve replies, and if he isn’t mistaken there’s a tiny flash of pride in Bucky’s face. It’s nowhere near the self-satisfied smirk he used to wear like a second skin, but it’s a start.

They eat their pancakes in silence, sitting on the bar stools on either side of the kitchen island, and Steve doesn’t mind the quiet so much this time. It’s nice, almost comfortable.

It doesn’t last.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Bucky asks after he’s finished his second stack. His metal hand lies deliberately in his lap, out of sight. His other one toys with his glass of orange juice, fingers dragging across the rim.

“Talk about what?” Steve asks, casually taking another bite of his own breakfast even though his stomach has turned to lead.

“About all the people I killed.”

Steve drops his fork with a clatter. “That wasn’t you.”

“Like hell it wasn’t.”

“But Hydra—“

“But Hydra nothing. I did that. I can remember them. I wake up sometimes and I can’t remember my own damn name but I remember the people I’ve killed.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Bucky.” Steve is standing now, leaning across the kitchen island, practically straining towards Bucky as if with his proximity he can physically pull this toxin from Bucky’s body. 

“I knew what I was doing.” Bucky isn’t listening to him. “It was like a dream most of the time, a horrible dream, but I knew what I was doing. I just didn’t _care_.”

“Bucky—“

“That woman, the redhead.” Bucky looks at Steve but his dark eyes are unfocussed. “I met her before. I shot her.”

“I know, she told me.” Steve wants to reach out and take Bucky’s hands, both of them, but the one is clenched into a fist and the other is out of his reach.

“Is she going to come after me now?”

The question is so unexpected Steve blinks. “Nat? Come after you?”

“I tried to kill her. Didn’t you learn anything from the war?” Bucky suddenly looks simultaneously exactly like his twenty-five year old self and like the weaponized machine that caught Steve’s shield on the rooftop of a high-rise. “One side hits first, and the other side hits back.”

“Natasha isn’t going to hit back. If she killed everyone who once tried to kill her, I don’t think there’d be too much of the general population left.” Bucky glares at him. “I’m not being flippant!” Steve continues. “That’s the truth.”

He does reach out now, and though Bucky’s hand is still in a fist, Steve covers it with his own. “Buck, look, we’re going to have to talk to Fury, and Natasha and Sam, and probably Stark and Banner and maybe a few others. But we’re going to do it on your time, when you’re ready. Nobody is forcing you to do anything, okay?”

Slowly, Bucky uncurls his fist. His fingers slip easily between Steve’s, and then they’re holding hands.

“You were being a little flippant,” Bucky says.

Steve cracks a smile. “Okay, a little. But Nat _is_ a seriously scary women. Amazing, but scary.”

Bucky’s fingers tighten slightly on Steve’s. “Is she your lover?”

“ _Natasha_?” 

Bucky shrugs. “Scary, talented women. I remember sometimes… Kinda your type, huh?”

“No. I mean, Natasha is…” Steve doesn’t know what to say, how to describe the person that is Natasha Romanov. Unbidden, his mind flashes back to the kiss he shared with her in the mall. Sure, she had pressed in her lips to his, and she was warm and soft, but there was nothing else there. It had been almost a lightbulb moment for Steve. He’d felt surprisingly comfortable with Natasha from almost the first day he met her, as comfortable as one could feel around a world-class spy-slash-assassin. They were coworkers from almost day one, allies not too long after that, but it wasn’t until he was kissing her in a mall and marveling at her professionalism that he realized they were friends.

“She’s a friend,” Steve tells Bucky. 

Bucky doesn’t seem reassured. If anything, he looks more nervous. “And the other one? The one with wings?”

Steve has to think about that for a moment. “Sam?”

Bucky shrugs again. The name isn’t important to him.

Steve almost laughs. He can’t imagine being in a relationship with Sam. The guy is sweet and loyal and smart and funny, of course, but somehow that feels far from Steve’s type. Maybe Bucky is right, and scary is something Steve is drawn towards.

Bucky reads something else in his hesitation, however, because his chin juts out defensively. “Things are different now,” he says. “I’ve seen it. Men are… together. In public. Not like it used to be.”

“I know,” Steve says hastily. He realizes they are still holding hands over his kitchen island and the moment suddenly feels weighted, thick. Steve clears his throat. “But Sam is just a friend too.”

Steve’s not quite sure what he’s expecting, but it isn’t for Bucky to pull his hand away, placing it in his lap with the other one. His hair has dried from the shower, and he ducks his head, hiding behind it.

“It’s not the same, is it?” Bucky asks, quiet and unsure like Steve’s never heard him sound before.

“What’s not the same?”

Bucky shakes his head, still looking down, eyelashes like oil spills against the ice-pale skin of his cheeks. “Anything.”

Steve doesn’t have an answer for that, at least not one he thinks either of them want to hear right now. He stands up instead, and starts clearing the dishes from their breakfast. When Bucky gives no indication that there’s something he’d rather be doing besides perching silently on a stool in Steve’s kitchen like some darkly beautiful bird of prey, Steve runs water into the sink and starts washing the dishes as well.

He washes and dries each dish efficiently and methodically, then lines them up in perfect formation in his strainer, plate following plate, cup after cup. _The perfect little soldiers_ , Steve thinks, and the distance between the man he is and the man he was supposed to be feels as wide and as deep as the chasm that first took Bucky away from him.


	2. Nor are We Forgiven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve was wrong, thinking that Nat and Bucky might have fought earlier in the apartment, when Natasha spoke to him in Russian. No, this is the moment that might end in bloodshed, and all because of this tiny grey creature prowling clumsily around the roof, its three normal legs making a sharp contrast for the fourth one that is little more than a stump.

“So he’s like, living with you?”

Steve shrugs into his sandwich before fitting nearly half of it in his mouth. He waits until he’s finished chewing to answer. “I suppose so, yeah.”

Sam definitely doesn’t wait until he’s finished chewing to snort disbelievingly. “And you just _left_ him there? Alone in your apartment?”

Steve cuts him a look over his glass of coke. “He’s not a pet, Sam. He won’t pee on my carpet or scratch the sofa.”

Sam snorts again. The whole time he and Steve were in the gym this morning, Sam held his tongue, but now they’re sitting in the sun outside the small corner café where they eat lunch almost every Sunday, he’s apparently ready to let loose.

Steve sighs. He’s a man of habit, always has been, so he’s developed a usual at this cafe after his workouts which normally starts with a sandwich and ends with slice of apple pie, often with a burger finding its way somewhere in the middle. Today he’s not sure he even wants to finish his first order of fries.

“He has no where else to go, Sam.” He tries to put on his Captain voice and sound firm, but he’s pretty sure he just sounds tired.

“Maybe that’s because he’s an assassin who tried to kill you and pretty much everyone you know?” Sam isn’t backing down. “Or did you forget the part where he kicked me off a flying helicarrier, or threw Natasha into a car, or _shot_ Fury, or—“

There waitress stops at the table to check-in and Sam flips a switch and immediately goes from irritated to charming. Steve stays silent except to decline her offer of a dessert menu. As soon as the waitress steps away, Sam’s smile drops and he seems ready to keep listing Bucky’s sins. They’re not something Steve needs repeated.

“Sam,” he says.

Sam shakes his head, reaches over to grab some of Steve’s fries, then sprawls back in his chair. “He’s killed a lot of people, is all I’m saying. Man has a lot of blood on his hands.”

“We have that in common, then,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, but we knew what we were doing.”

Steve raises his eyebrow. “And that’s better?”

After a beat, Sam has the grace to flush. “Alright, fair point.”

“Bucky is a soldier, just like us.” Steve thinks of Bucky, standing in the kitchen, happy to just to remember a food he didn’t like, and feels the need to drive the point home. “And then they took even that away from him. They made him a prisoner, a weapon.”

“I guess you’d know about that better than anyone, huh?” When Steve gives him another look Sam sits up straight and leans forward. “Look, Steve, I’m not saying he’s the still enemy or he needs to be locked away—“

“Good, because that isn’t happening.”

“ _But_ I am saying I want you to be careful. You’re a trusting man, Rogers. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Steve considers Sam, and can’t help a smile. For all he rails Steve about being too trusting and too willing to see the good in everyone, there’s nothing but earnestness and genuine concern in Sam’s expression.

“I appreciate that, Sam. But you don’t have to worry. Bucky can’t hurt me anymore.”

“He _shot_ you like _five times_ , and he nearly broke your face—“

“He can’t hurt me any more than he did when I thought he had died.”

It’s a quiet confession, but it settles over the sun-dappled table like the shadow from a storm cloud. Steve said it without a thought, but as he watches Sam squirm uncomfortably in his chair he realizes it’s a trump card.

“You trust Bucky,” Sam says. “And I trust you. So, you say he’s okay… He’s okay. I’m behind you, Captain. One hundred percent.”

Steve’s less than surprised and far more than mortified to find tears spring to his eyes at Sam’s simple declaration. He’s still not convinced he deserves this man’s extraordinary faith, but he’ll never stop being grateful for it. 

“Thank you,” he says softly.

Sam grins, and it’s so sudden and broad Steve is taken aback.

“But,” Sam says, his grin edging towards full-blown smirk, “Only if you can convince Natasha too.”

Apparently Steve isn’t the only one with a trump card.

***

The knock on the door makes Steve and Bucky jump, though they should have been expecting it. Steve told Natasha to stop by around one in the afternoon, and his wristwatch tells him it’s less than a minute to the hour. He suspects by the time he opens the door of his apartment, it will be exactly one o’clock. It’s something that can be said for government operatives. They are unfailingly punctual.

Steve throws a quick reassuring glance over to where Bucky is standing near the back of the living room in the spot where’s he’s been pacing for the last half hour. Steve had tried to be diplomatic earlier, telling Bucky he wanted him to meet Natasha properly.

In a moment shrewdness utterly reminiscent of the Bucky Steve knew before the war, Bucky fixed him with a level look and said, “You mean you want her to get on board with your pretense that I’m no longer a threat.”

“You _are_ no longer a threat,” Steve insisted calmly, though on the inside his heart was hammering against his ribs. Bucky’s mouth scrunched into a frown, another look Steve recognized all too well.

“A gun doesn’t stop being a gun just because no one is aiming it at anything,” Bucky muttered, then shut himself in Steve’s bedroom for the rest of the morning. Steve was half-convinced he was going to stay in there for the entirety of Natasha’s visit, but he emerged around noon, accepted the sandwich Steve offered him in a way that managed to be both grudging and sheepish, then began his pacing.

The situation is so profoundly awkward there’s nothing much Steve can do but give Bucky an encouraging nod before opening the door. Natasha stands on the other side, looking for all the world like a young professional enjoying a casual Saturday. Her hair is pulled into a loose ponytail, and she’s wearing a bluejeans and a light jacket. She has the jacket zipped almost all the way, and is slightly hunched around a strange bulge over her ribs.

“Hi, Nat.” Steve steps back, but Natasha makes no move to enter the apartment. Steve glances back at Bucky. He hasn’t moved either. “I guess introductions aren’t really needed, are they? You two have met.”

There’s a heavy pause, and Steve is about to ask about the lump in Natasha’s coat, when suddenly she looks right at Bucky and casually spills out several sentences in Russian.

Steve tenses, but tries to hide it. Though the most violent thing Bucky has done since showing up a week ago is slam the bathroom door when he got frustrated at struggling to recall a certain memory and went off for a sulk, Steve can often sense a rage in him, boiling just under the surface. His shield is propped against the wall just to his left; Steve doesn’t reach for it yet, but he will do what is necessary to stop his friends from harming each other.

Bucky’s triggers are a little unexpected, both in terms of what will and what won’t upset him, and that’s never clearer than now when after a moment he calmly answers Natasha, also in Russian, the words flowing from his mouth as naturally as they did hers.

To Steve’s increasing bafflement, Natasha laughs. 

“I wondered if they taught you that,” she says. “Not just fighting tactics, but manners too. Seems like we have similar education.”

It’s an olive branch if there ever was one. Steve is both impressed and inexpressibly grateful that Natasha was able to get there so quickly and so simply, saying without saying to Bucky she doesn’t see him as an enemy, but an equal.

Steve can see Bucky’s stance relax a fraction of an inch out of the corner of his eye, and he beams at Natasha, knowing he can’t make a big deal out of it but unable to hide his gratitude just the same.

“Come on in, Nat,” he says, realizing she is still technically in the hallway. To his surprise, Natasha shakes her head. She’s looking at Bucky rather than him.

“I think a more neutral space might be better for now,” she says, all diplomacy. Steve’s not entirely sure what she means by that, but he’s suddenly conscious of the way Bucky is still standing behind the couch, shoulders hunched and eyes wary, like an animal who is watching someone get a little too close to it’s territory. “Besides,” Natasha continues, “There’s this.”

She pulls the zipper of her jacket down a few inches and leans forward so Steve can see what’s inside.

“A cat?” 

“A kitten,” Natasha corrects. “Because of a cat that was apparently not as neutered as a certain vet promised me.”

The look on her face makes Steve spare a moment of genuine pity for that vet, but he’s still struggling to keep up. “You have a cat?”

Natasha gives him a withering look as if to say obviously. Steve is struck, not for the first time, with the realization of how little he knows about her personal life.

“You have a rooftop garden in this building, right?” Natasha asks, because the reverse is most certainly not true. “Let’s head up there.”

She turns and strides down the hallway without waiting for an answer from Steve or Bucky. Steve turns to Bucky, and finds him looking almost… Relieved?

“Might as well go,” Bucky says, ducking his head and hiding whatever expression that was behind a fall of hair. “Nice to get some air.”

“Alright.” 

They walk down the hallway side-by-side, and it’s narrow enough their arms brush against each other the whole way. Steve almost reaches out to take Bucky’s hand before he realizes what he’s doing. He hasn’t held Bucky’s hand since they were both little kids and Bucky convinced Steve to skip school one day and go with him to a fair that was going on by the docks. Small even then, the crowd had been overwhelming for Steve, and Bucky had clung to his hand the entire time to keep them from being separated. Why Steve had been about to do the same thing to Bucky now in his apartment hallway he can’t explain.

The rooftop of Steve’s apartment is all open space, lined with waist-high brick walls. Small saplings sprouting from matching brick planters add a bit of greenery to the city scape and offer some impromptu seating, while a picnic table and lounge chairs in tastefully weatherproofed wood offer space for more official entertainment.

It was one of the reasons Steve had rented this particular apartment. The roof reminded him of the tiny fire escape balcony outside the apartment he and Bucky shared back before the war. There were no decorative trees or furniture on that balcony. It was barely big enough to fit a single person, much less anything else, but at the time when they were both barely making ends meet the extra few feet of rusted iron space felt like a luxury.

Steve remembers long summer nights, when, desperate for any relief from the oppressive heat inside their apartment, he and Bucky would escape to the fire escape. Steve would sit on the window ledge, wheezing in the thick, muggy air, while Bucky would blow cigarette smoke out over the city and drops of condensation chased each other from the neck of his beer bottle over the curves of his fingers.

Unlike that little balcony, Steve rarely uses the rooftop space at his current apartment, but he likes knowing it’s there. When he and Bucky emerge onto the roof now, blinking against the bright sunlight, they find Natasha has already taken up a spot on one of the planters. The kitten is no longer inside her jacket but perched on her lap, studiously licking its paw.

“I wouldn’t sit near that tree over there,” Natasha says. “This little guy isn’t totally house trained yet.”

“Noted.” Steve takes a seat on the end of one of the lounge chairs. 

Bucky looks ready to bolt at any second, and if Steve is honest it’s not out of the realm of possibly for him to just go leaping over the edge of the roof and disappear. Steve feels marginally better when Bucky sits down on the bench of the picnic table, though he does so with a rigidly straight back and a glare that oddly enough seems to be directed not towards Natasha, but towards the kitten on her lap.

“Is there a reason you brought…” Steve gestures towards the small grey ball of fluff. Natasha pats it with a single manicured finger.

“Dobrynya.”

“Bless you.”

“Ha. Ha. Dobrynya Nikitich was a bogatyr in the bylina.”

Steve raises his eyebrow, and Nat rolls her eyes as though it’s a major inconvenience he never learned Russian.

“A knight, from the epics. Like Sir Gallahad, or someone.”

“You couldn't have named the cat Gallahad then?”

“It’s a kitten, Steve, and no. It’s Dobrynya. He was famous for being brave. He fought dragons.”

She scoops the kitten from her lap and sets it gently on the ground where it immediately starts padding around, sniffing curiously. Bucky begins to scramble on the picnic bench, pulling his legs up like a dame who’s seen a rat.

“Is this a joke?” he demands.

“Why?” Natasha asks, all pouty-lipped, wide-eyed innocence that isn’t fooling anyone. “Are you laughing at him?”

Steve was wrong, thinking that Nat and Bucky might have fought earlier in the apartment, when Natasha spoke to him in Russian. No, this is the moment that might end in bloodshed, and all because of this tiny grey creature prowling clumsily around the roof, its three normal legs making a sharp contrast for the fourth one that is little more than a stump.

“Natasha—“ Steve starts.

“Clint says me having one cat is more than enough,” Natasha breezes over him easily. “He thinks she’s out to get him.”

Bucky is still watching Dobrynya like the kitten is a roving grenade that might explode at any moment. Steve watches Bucky, and Nat watches him.

“This is normally when someone makes a bird joke about Clint,” she prompts gently.

“I’m restraining myself,” Steve says dryly. “Are you saying you want us to take this cat?”

“No!” Bucky practically shouts, flapping his hands in Dobrynya’s direction. He looks almost childish, except for the mechanized metal arm. “We can’t, we can’t.”

“You could just hold him,” Natasha suggests. Bucky looks at her with pure horror.

“No,” he whispers, and he looks so small with his feet pulled up like that and an unhappy frown curving his lips, Steve takes half a step forward. He wants to wrap Bucky up in his arms, he wants to _protect_ him, which is more than a little silly considering the greatest threat they are currently facing is a three-legged kitten.

Natasha bends down and scoops up Dobrynya, holding out the small ball of grey fluff like an offering.

“Just try,” she says.

“NO!” The childishness is gone and Bucky is suddenly all soldier, glaring at Natasha like his gaze could strip the very flesh from her bones. Steve takes a full step forward now, convinced yet again this is going to be a fight.

For all Bucky’s intensely murderous look— and the no doubt fairly fresh memory of their encounter that ended with a bullet hole through her stomach— Natasha looks supremely unconcerned. She shrugs.

“Fine. I thought I might try.”

She turns around, Dobrynya in her arms, and apparently her visit is over as she looks like she’s going to head towards the door of the roof. Steve isn’t really inclined to stop her, and for the first time he makes the mistake a thousand foolish people have made before him. He underestimates her.

Natasha whips around with a speed and grace an Olympic figure skater would envy, and before anyone has a chance to react, neatly drops Dobrynya into Bucky’s lap.

Bucky jerks and then immediately freezes. Steve has seen the same reaction before from soldiers who have been shot. It’s the initial surprise, then the terror, the knowledge that something horrible has happened and the desperately futile wish to delay the moment it gets worse.

Seeing that look on Bucky is like a physical pain to Steve. He still doesn’t understand what all is happening here, but he wants it to stop. He steps forward again. Nat grabs his arm.

“Wait,” she says. Steve is going to argue, throw off her hand— because super spy or no, she’s not a match for his strength— but then he notices the way she’s staring at Bucky, a fierce sort of hope blazing in her eyes, and that convinces him to heed her command.

Dobrynya seems only mildly discontented by the situation. The reason for that discontent becomes clear as the kitten wobbles a little in Bucky’s lap, then leans forward and butts his tiny head against Bucky’s metal hand.

Bucky looks, if possible, even more terrified, but Dobrynya just butts him again, then looks up and meows. The sound is small and needy, and the message is clear. _Why aren’t you petting me?_

Slowly, achingly slowly, and with all the precision of the 107th’s number one sharpshooter, Bucky reaches out with his other hand and touches one finger to the top of the kitten’s head.

Dobrynya meows happily and curls into Bucky’s stomach. He continues his petting, infinitely gentle.

“You’re okay,” Bucky says wonderingly. “You’re just fine.”

“See?” Nat murmurs, quietly so only Steve can hear. “Brave.”

“How did you know?” Steve asks.

“Because it’s a fear every assassin has after a while.” She’s looking at Bucky but Steve thinks she’s seeing something else. “You kill enough things, you start thinking you’re not capable of doing anything else.”

She turns to Steve and the moment is over. She's all business now. “Fury knows,” she says bluntly.

Steve nods, unsurprised. “How long do I have?”

“Two weeks, if nothing goes wrong. Then they want to bring him in.”

Steve sighs, glancing over to make sure Bucky hasn’t heard them. No matter what Steve does, he can’t ever seem to get out from under S.H.I.E.L.D, Hydra, all of it. He wonders, not for the first time, if it was ever possible for him to escape this. _Choice, not chance, determines your destiny_ , Aristotle said, but he didn’t say _whose_ choice, and in Steve’s life it so rarely seems to be his own.

“He’s not going to like it,” he tells Natasha.

“He doesn’t have to,” she answers. “But it will be easier if he comes willingly. For both of you.”

She touches his arm again, but this time it’s soft, almost sweet, and then she’s leaving for real.

“The litter box is in your bathroom,” she calls over her shoulder. “And there’s a bag of cat food and two bowls on your kitchen counter.”

“Wait.” Distracted by the sight of Bucky scratching Dobrynya under the chin, it takes Steve a moment to process that. “What? How did you—“

Nat only waggles her fingers at him and disappears back inside.

“Okay,” Steve mutters. “Okay, so… We have a cat.”

“Come on, pal,” Bucky says, and at first Steve thinks he’s talking to Dobrynya until Bucky looks up and gives him a small, glorious smile. “It’s a kitten.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not mean for there to be a kitten, it just happened and then Bucky was petting it and I couldn't take it away.
> 
> Next chapter up soon! Find me on tumblr [here](http://lightning-and-a-lightning-bug.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined. :)


	3. Which Brings Us Back to the Hero's Shoulders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing is, lying in his bed in the dark, wrapped in the arms of the Winter Soldier, Steve has never felt safer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive spelling/grammar errors in this, or feel free to point them out if they drive you crazy! It's been ages since I posted so I skipped beta here to get it posted faster. Will correct errors as they're found.

“Do you want to go out with me?”

Bucky looks up from where he’s sitting on the floor by the couch, batting a balled up sock back and forth with Dobrynya. Steve had come back from a grocery run the other day to find his meticulously kept sock drawer had been yanked open and half its contents strewn about the room. He might have thought it was some kind of breakdown on Bucky’s part, except for the smug glint in Bucky’s eye, and the way the thick woolen socks Steve had always worn for winter nights remained untouched.

“Uh,” Steve says, realizing his opening line wasn’t perhaps as smooth as it had sounded when he’d practiced it in his head. “I mean, do you want to go outside?”

“Outside?” Bucky repeats.

“Yeah.” Steve sits down on the couch, reaching out a hand to pat Dobynya on the head when his ankle is swiped at by a tiny paw. “You haven’t left this apartment for five days now. I thought maybe you’d like to go to a museum.”

Bucky pulls a face that Steve now thinks of as his trying-to-remember face. Steve waits patiently.

“Museums,” Bucky says slowly. “I like those.”

“Yeah.” Steve lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “You do.”

“You like them too,” Bucky continues. “You like the art. Did I kiss you at one?”

The bottom drops out of Steve’s stomach. Bucky can go into an almost trance-like state when he’s striving to remember things, and Steve’s not always sure Bucky knows what he’s saying.

“I kissed someone at a museum,” Bucky says. “Someone beautiful. In front of a painting of some town, some place in Europe with these stormy skies…”

The bottom returns to Steve’s stomach but it’s made of lead. He knows what painting that is. View of Toledo, by El Greco, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s one of Steve’s favorites.

“It wasn’t me, Buck,” Steve says. He tries to keep his voice light, tries to be happy that Bucky is recovering any memories at all, even if they aren’t memories Steve shares.

“Maybe it was a dream,” Bucky murmurs. He blinks and comes abruptly back to himself. He leans over Dobrynya, focussing intently on the kitten. His left hand disappears, shoved deep into his sweatshirt pocket. “I don’t want to go to a museum.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees easily. “Then maybe just a walk?” Bucky still looks doubtful, so Steve quickly adds, “Tonight. Not now.”

“Tonight,” Bucky repeats, and Steve can see him processing what that means. Some of the tension goes out of his face. “Okay.”

“Okay.” A rush of relief goes through Steve as well. He thinks about Fury’s deadline, and how Steve isn’t supposed to be allowed to keep Bucky to himself for much longer. Going out at night means less people around, and less people means less sharing Bucky.

Steve thinks maybe he should feel guilty about that.

He doesn’t.

***

New York is beautiful at night. Steve thought that decades ago and he thinks it now. Of course, it’s changed. Even the air is different now. Steve has watched the news, he knows about industrialism and pollution, just another example of things that can be good for so many and yet still create poison.

It’s hard to be upset about pollution on a night like this though, when it makes the city look like a giant jar full of fireflies someone has dropped underwater. Steve loves to stare at the city lights until he feels drunk and hazy with the sight of them, but tonight he’s looking at Bucky.

If Steve is going to be admiring things that look good at night, Bucky completely blows New York out of the water.

Everything about him, from his hair to his eyes to the alert, wary expression he wears is dark and beautiful. Looking at him is like staring into the ocean at night from the edge of a bridge with a broken railing. Impenetrable and dangerous, there’s still something seductive about that dark unknown. Steve feels like if he were to just take the jump, he would be swallowed whole.

Bucky moves without a sound at Steve’s side. Gone is the confident swagger Steve remembers, and in its place is the walk of a predator.

_No._ Steve remembers what Natasha said. _A ghost_.

The comparison feels particularly apt tonight as Bucky wears a dark sweatshirt and dark jeans that have him blending into the shadows of the alleys and shuttered storefronts. The urge to grab Bucky’s hand that Steve felt in his hallway returns now even more strongly, but this time Steve knows the cause of it.

He wants to hold onto Bucky, keep him tethered in this world. Steve has lost Bucky twice now, which is two times more than he ever wanted to experience. Each time Steve was tempted to follow Bucky, to join him in that abyss. If Steve loses Bucky a third time, he knows it won’t survive it. He won’t want to.

Bucky doesn’t slip away however, and Steve doesn’t try to hold his hand. They walk side by side down city streets they walked half a century ago. Some things are different. Some are the same.

They walk without a destination, drifting down side streets and past brownstones. They don’t speak, but it’s as if there’s an invisible force tying them together and guiding them where to go.

Steve was half-expecting Bucky to be jumpy or hyper-alert on this first time leaving the apartment, but instead he’s quiet and withdrawn. When he passes strangers on the sidewalk his twitches his shoulder back or takes a smooth step to the side to avoid touching them. The unconscious precision of the movements makes Steve sad. He remembers the way Bucky used to enter a room, loose limbed and bold, his entire presence taking up space.

The fear that Bucky might disappear bubbles up again in Steve’s throat. He’s so distracted by it he almost bumps into someone himself. As he hastily steps aside he realizes where their wandering has taken them. Times Square.

Bucky stops walking and so does Steve. They used to come here all the time before the war. It was one of Steve’s favorite places. All the lights and the people and the buildings made him feel small, but it was okay because they made everything else feel small too. Steve would bring his pencils and sketchbook there and sketch for hours, little scenes of the life occurring all around him. It made Bucky practically apoplectic with worry.

“You wanna catch another sickness?” he’d demanded once. “Then by all means, keep hanging out on street corners with pigeons.”

Another time it was, “You know it ain’t good for your asthma, pal. All those people, not enough air.”

And once, late at night in their apartment, quietly, “I just don’t want anyone to take advantage of you. Steal your wallet, or… worse. You gotta stay safe, Steve.”

Despite Bucky’s vocal dislike for that particular activity of Steve’s, one day Steve had come home and found all his little sketches hung on the walls, each one carefully encased in a simple wooden frame.

If Steve had his sketching things now there’s only one thing he would want to draw. He studies Bucky’s profile, and the way his features are outlined by the bright city lights. Steve images tracing those lines onto paper, his pencil moving fast and sharp to capture the slant of Bucky’s eyes and the cut of his cheekbones, then slow and smooth for the softness of his hair and swell of his lips.

Something hits Steve, knocking him forward. There’s a panicked second where he thinks he’s under attack before he realizes it was just some guy in a hurry and not watching where he’s going. Some guy who is about to be body slammed into the ground.

Steve catches Bucky just in time, grabbing him by his unaltered arm.

“Bucky, don’t,” he says, trying to sound calm even though his heart is beating a mile a minute. “I’m fine, Buck, let it go.”

Bucky is shaking, straining in Steve’s hold. His eyes are wild, his mouth clenched into a furious line like a knife blade. Steve tries to pull Bucky aside, get him out of the way. It seems like there’s people everywhere now, dozens of them streaming past. Someone else brushes Steve’s arm and Bucky snarls, actually snarls like feral animal.

Steve does the only thing he can think of, and throws his body weight against Bucky, shoving him off the sidewalk and into an alcove of the nearest building. Steve is grateful for the shadows he was so wary of before as they envelop them like cloud of smoke. Bucky lunges against Steve, trying to break free, but Steve only holds on tighter.

“Bucky,” he realizes he’s saying, over and over into soft brown hair that smells like Steve’s shampoo. “Bucky, please.”

Bucky freezes at the sound of Steve’s voice, and he thinks that might be the end of it. Bucky will stop fighting him, they’ll separate, and then they’ll go back to Steve’s apartment and not say a word about it. And maybe that’s how it would have gone, if Steve hadn’t felt the small tremors still running through Bucky’s body, and if he hadn’t pulled Bucky even closer, and if hadn’t touched his lips ever so slightly to the velvety skin of Bucky’s temple. But that’s exactly what Steve does, and Bucky just melts.

His body goes soft and liquid in Steve’s arms, filling all the spaces between them like he’s made for it. His right arm wraps around Steve’s neck, hand clamping to his shoulder, and Steve even feels the brush of the left hand near his hip. Bucky breathes against Steve’s neck, nearly panting, but there’s nothing animalistic about it now. Steve’s whole world is narrowed to this man and the feel of those hot, wet breaths on his skin. He forgets about Times Square, he forgets about the people still moving on the sidewalk behind them, he forgets about Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. and all of it.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, and Steve is shocked at his body’s reaction to his own name. It’s a sort of shudder than turns into a roll of his hips and stomach.

“Yes?” he manages to answer, trying to stay still.

“I wanna go home.”

“Okay.” It might be the desperation in Bucky’s voice, or the realization they are still standing very much in public, but Steve finds it easy to comply with that request. He pulls away from Bucky, but he’s not taking anymore chances.

Bucky doesn’t seem surprised when Steve grabs ahold of his right hand. He links their fingers as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and then they’re off, moving in perfect step as always, through the city night.

***

The apartment is almost completely dark when they get back. The city feels miles away now even as its light trickles in through the bare windows, pale and diffuse. There’s a flash of yellow as Dobrynya, curled on the couch like it’s a throne, opens one eye. 

Bucky sinks down by her side and starts petting the crown of her head, making soothing noises in his throat. His movements are slow and sluggish now, like his body is heavier than he has the strength to hold. Steve recognizes that heaviness, has felt it before in the bone-deep exhaustion that comes after a battle.

Steve’s not feeling all that awake himself, especially as the mood now is far less tense than it was when they were outside. He doesn’t make any moves to turn on lights, but instead just stands there, listening to Dobrynya’s soft purrs and Bucky’s softer words.

“Everything is okay,” Bucky is murmuring. “We’re home now, Dobby.”

The unfamiliar nick-name pulls Steve from his daze. “Dobby?” he repeats.

“Yeah.” Bucky doesn’t look up from scratching under the kitten’s chin. “We only use her full name when she’s being naughty, isn’t that right, princess?”

Steve is hit with a sudden rush of fondness so strong it nearly makes his knees buckle. He’s never felt anything like this, not when he had his first kiss outside the movie theatre at seventeen, not when he first found Bucky in Zola’s lab, not even when he was listening to Peggy’s voice in his ear as he piloted his plane into the ice and took what he was sure were going to be his last breaths.

He turns away from Bucky, knowing if he looks up he’ll see everything Steve is feeling all over his face.

“Going to bed, Buck,” Steve manages to mumble, desperate to escape to his bedroom and possibly sort through his thoughts, or more likely ignore them until they go away. There’s very little that could stop Steve from shutting himself away right now, except for—

“Steve?”

He stops, but doesn’t turn. “Yeah, Buck?”

“Can I… I mean, can we…”

Steve risks a small glance over his shoulder. Bucky’s head is tucked down, his shoulders hunched. 

“I don’t want to sleep alone,” he admits quietly. A shiver goes through Steve, starting at his head and passing to his stomach, like someone is trailing their fingers down his spine.  
“Okay,” he says through lips that have gone oddly numb. “Come on, then.”

Bucky gets up from the couch, still moving slowly, carefully. Dobyrnya makes one vague noise of discontent but quickly settles back into sleep. Steve leads the way into his bedroom. His face feels both hot and cold, and he’s more glad than ever he didn’t turn on any lights.

Inside Steve’s bedroom the air feels charged, electric. Steve doesn’t know what to say, how to hold his arms. _This isn’t that unusual_ , he tries to remind himself. _Remember that time on the mountain? Remember the winters in your old apartment when you’d shove your beds together and share comforters for warmth?_

But no matter what Steve tells himself, this is different. He stares at his bed, tucked into the corner of the small room against the window, with its white sheets and plain gray quilt, lit silver by a stray strip of moonlight. He stares so long that Bucky clears his throat.

“So, is this how super soldiers sleep?” Bucky asks, his voice thick in the heavy air. “Fully dressed and standing up? Cause, pal, this is not really what I was—“

“Shut up, Bucky,” Steve counters, and for a brief moment things feel a little less off-balance. Like he does every night, Steve unties his shoes and sets them under the simple wooden chair in the corner. Next he takes off his sweater, folds it and sets it on top of the chair. His pants follow, also folded, crisp and neat. He pauses, hands hovering near the hem of his t-shirt, and glances at Bucky. Bucky, who hasn’t removed any of his clothes.

Though his mouth is dry and his heart may be breaking through his chest, Steve gives Bucky his best raised eyebrow. Slowly, almost deliberately, Bucky moves his hands to his waist and pops the button on his pants. He strips them from his legs, and folds them as neatly as Steve did. There’s something almost comical about it, the army training still apparent in these two men pulling their clothes off in front of one another in a darkened bedroom.

_If only our commanding officers could see us now,_ Steve thinks, and has to suppress the hysterical giggle that threatens to erupt from his mouth. Bucky unzips his sweatshirt and shucks it off, turning away from Steve so his metal arm is hidden in the darkness. Now they’re both left in briefs and t-shirts, and they’re both just standing there.

_I saw you,_ Steve wants to say. _In my bathroom, remember? I saw what they did to you. You don’t have to hide from me._ Then he realizes he’s been the one leading the way this whole time, and he’s the one who is hesitating.

Like ripping off a band-aid, Steve just goes for it, and pulls the t-shirt over his head. He folds it too, sets it on top of his sweater on the chair. For some reason, he can’t look at Bucky now, can’t turn around. His body feels as strange and unfamiliar as it did the first few days after they first gave him the serum. He peels back his comforter and slides into bed, facing the window, his back to the room. To Bucky. 

After a moment he hears the quiet rustle of cloth that tells him Bucky has also shed his t-shirt, then the mattress dips behind him. Though Bucky doesn’t touch him, Steve can feels his presence all down his back. They lie in silence for a moment, both just breathing into the chill air. 

“How many of those are from me?” Bucky asks at last.

“What?” Steve asks. A cold finger touches a spot on his side and he jumps, nearly smacks his head on the window frame. Bucky doesn’t take his hand away, though, and after a second as his skin warms Steve realizes it’s Bucky’s right hand, prodding an old scar just behind his ribs.

“How many of these are from me?” Bucky repeats doggedly.

“Don’t,” Steve says. “Don’t do that, Buck.”

“But before, when I… when I—”

“ _Please._ ” Steve reaches around himself and grabs Bucky’s hand in his own. He pulls it tight around his stomach, then rolls back, feeling the coldness of Bucky’s metal arm beneath his chest. He reaches for that hand too, even though he can feel Bucky trying to flinch away from him. Eventually he manages to come in contact with a black leather glove, the only other thing besides his briefs that Bucky didn’t take off.

Steve can feel Bucky trembling, shuddering into his back. Slowly, using only his left hand, Steve pulls at the leather, one finger at a time. When the glove finally tugs free, he tosses it as far as he can past the end of his bed, then quickly grabs onto to Bucky’s hand again. The metal warms rapidly against his skin as he pulls Bucky’s arms snug around himself. Then he lies still, and forces himself to relax.

Bucky is still tense, his body rigid, but the longer they lie in the darkness, Steve holding both his arms and pressed into his chest, the calmer he becomes. After a long time, when the moonlight has slid past the window and the bed is entirely wrapped in velvet darkness, Steve is positive Bucky has fallen asleep.

He allows himself one small smile, and tilts his head down. He shifts Bucky’s left hand just enough that he can reach it with his mouth, and he gives the palm one small kiss. He thinks about what some of the others would say, Fury or Stark or even Sam or Nat, if they could see him here. _I’m literally sleeping with the enemy,_ he thinks, and has to stifle a laugh.

The thing is, lying in his bed in the dark, wrapped in the arms of the Winter Soldier, Steve has never felt safer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr [here](http://lightning-and-a-lightning-bug.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> Next update soon! Find me on tumblr [here](http://lightning-and-a-lightning-bug.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined


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